Thread: Why Pyramid?

I have read about pyramid honing and some of the discussion in the forum and my question is: Is it not fundamentally wrong to go back and forth between honing grits? I mean, if you hone on the 4K side and observe that the edge is honed evenly, then move to the 8K side and hone till you have an edge honed evenly to the 8K degree, by going back to 4K you destroy the smoothness of the 8K edge. What good could come of making a nice edge then "scratching it up" with a lowwer grit? I always thought that sharpening was a stedy progression.
Don't get me wrong here, I am only wanting to understand the reasoning behind the method, and I am not dismissing the idea.

Humbly new to this,
Emil

Glad you have the correct perspective. If this were simply honing knives or cutlery your perspective would be accurate. Without sitting around and typing my fingers dry describing the effects of the pyramid let me just try and open your mind abit to the concepts involved instead of trying to pry you open with a lot of stuff you might not believe in anyway. With a straight razor you are trying to create a perfect bevel and then add just enough polishing to smooth out the striations to allow it to smoothly ride along the face and create a shaving/cutting edge. Given that 3/5 strokes on a Norton 8K should produce a shaveable cutting edge, what do you suggest you do when this fails? There are two answers, one keep honing on the 8K until you eliminate all the striations, destroy what might have been a close but inperfect bevel, or keep growing old hoping that someday you'll achieve a shaving edge . . . or, well I'll let you figure out the only other reasonable option.

Or you could assume that you have the ability to create a perfect bevel on the 4K. Then just a few strokes on the 8K should take care of it. If it doesn't just keep at it for a while, and then just keep at it a while longer, and if that fails, why what the heck just keep at it a while longer, night after night. In fact, why don't you go ahead and make a pact with yourself now, that you'll run your next razor 1 pass over a 4K hone and never touch it again and only hone on 8K for the rest of your life. . .now doesn't that sound a little odd too?

How about this analogy, lets say you want to sharpen a pencil. And you have a massive cutting knife and a piece of fine paper (you know the type you run a pencil over at an angle to develop a fine writing edge).

OK, so now you cut the end of the pencil with the knife but you can't see that you've actually not cut the pencil into a perfect "bevel" you've sort of got one side really angled right and the other side doesn't have a good angle. Now you can run that pencil lead tip over the paper at an angle and polish all day, but it won't do sh*t because the bevel is imperfect. Now you could keep running the pencil over the paper for weeks and weeks; and yes, someday you'll get there, but when? When do you just give up and say...you know I should just go back to the knife and cut this pencil into a better tip (or in the case of a razor: bevel). THEN, go back to the paper (8k grit hone).

That help any? I think the concept your missing is the extreme high grits your using and what little overall effect they have. You could polish on 8K for a long time and not have much effect where a few strokes back on 4K would save you a lot of time. In fact you should go back and forth on 4K to 8K and see if the 8K starts creating a shaving effect, back and forth, back and forth....wooops that would be a pyramid huh? Or you may just be overestimating the average users ability to "know" when they have a perfect bevel.

In short, yes ~ the 8k will get you there. But it will take a LONNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNN NNNNNG time unless you keep a more aggressive grit in the mix. When you DO have the bevel from the 4k, and you've taken it all the way to the edge uniformly and without microscopic chips, then go to 8k and continue to progress from there. The reason for throwing in the 8k during the 4k stage is to keep smoothing over the scratches a little as you go. This helps keep the edge from chipping out on you. Honing at an angle (X) has the same benefit. Going straight down the hone raises the risk of the edge catching on something that you might not see or even feel and gouging the edge, microscopically speaking of course, causing these tiny crumbled out, or chipped spots. The edge of a razor at this thinness is very very fragile. These are a few things i've learned and hopefully they might shed a little light. Everyone has their own opinions, naturally. Reading enough of them and toss in your own experiences and you'll begin to form your own personal conclusions.

Jeff

I seriously doubt that the 8000 grit alone will ever provide a perfect shaving edge. I find that I have to be quite careful with the 8k in order not to over polish the edge. The 4k side seems essential to create the cutting teeth. The 8k refines them further so that they will shave well. Just MHO.

X

Honing a razor requires experience and a feel for when to switch from one grit to another. Anyone starting out will lack this ability so they have two choices, practice and ruin a good blade or get an Eboy special and practice with that until they get the experience necessary. The pyramid is just a starting point in the honing process. For one lacking experience it will enable you to do a pretty good job from the start and once you develop experience you will find its still a good starting point from which to make alterations to suit the needs of each individual blade you work with.

I think that anytime you put your blade to any size grit the name of the game is removing metal. The coarser the grit the faster it will remove it and it will remove it in a coarser fashion. I think you could well develop a bevel with an 8K or even a 12K but it would take forever however you couldn't really polish a blade with a 1K or a 4K you need the 8K or 12K for that. Its kind of like, would you fly cross country in a little cessna at 140 knots or a 737 at 500 knots? Both will get you there but one will take longer. On the other hand if your flying from an point A to point B only 25 miles away its very impractical to take a 737 the cessna would be the way to go.

OK I didn't want to open this can of worms, but what the hell. I'm feeling a bit froggy this evening . Let me preface my little rant here by saying that I hope I don't come across in the wrong way. I think these types of discussions are healthy for the str8 shaving world, and I always learn from them. This is not so much a reply to this thread as it is a general point I've been thinking about elaborating on. This just seems like the place to do it, and this is sort of a reply to some common themes I've been seeing.

Now then. I don't think anyone is arguing against the fact that the 4k side of a Norton cuts faster than the 8k side. Of course it does. 8k does cut, however. If it polishes, it cuts, albeit at a much slower rate. It will get you there, eventually. Now as for the 4k "teeth"... Stone me and call me a heretic, but I do NOT think 4k "teeth" are necessary to a good shave. I know most everybody here is in the "striations" & "saw teeth" corner of the argument, but not me. That makes no sense to me whatsoever, neither in theory nor in practice, not at anything near the 4k level. The only purpose of the 4k stone to me is setting and trueing the bevel before moving on. I will concede this, however: No matter how fine our cutting media gets, there are always going to be some striations left behind in the steel. Otherwise no cutting would have taken place. I also understand that these tiny teeth aid the blade in gaining purchase to slice into the outer wall of a hair shaft. We strive to get the ever sharper edge, by moving from 4k to 8k to coticule, to shapton pro 15k, hell even some use the 30k stone. After that it is pastes..... Anyway, all of these cut. All of these leave striations. The higher ones polish, but how do they do this? By miniscule cuts which leave striations. "Polish" is a subjective word. The 4k stone polishes as compared to the 1200 grit Spyderco stone. Each level smooths over the work of the previous. I don't understand what X means by "overpolishing" an edge at 8k. I take my edges all the way to .25 micron paste. They shave (me) wonderfully. By the time the edge reaches this point, there is absolutely nothing left from the 4k stage other than the bevel. After the 4k stage of my honing, and this may be knife technique if that's what it's called, my goal is to further refine the edge with each graduation by removing as much as possible the striations left by the previous level and replacing them with the striations of the current level. All the way up to .25 micron. If bigger teeth are necessary to effectively cut a whisker, then why do the shaves get better the further away you get from the 4k? I go from the 15k stone to the .25 micron paste. I notice a difference with only that jump. Sure after the 15k and smooth leather it will shave fine, but taking it one step further with the paste makes it BETTER. Hell, 60 passes as opposed to 20 passes on the .25 makes a difference. What am I doing with each level up? Making the teeth smaller and smaller. Making the striations smaller and smaller. Could some of this be in my head? Very possible, I won't argue that. I would really like to see a blade actually cutting a whisker on a microscopic level. If there is something to bigger teeth, maybe that would show me. In my own shaves, however, the sharper the better. The finer the edge, the easier it is for it to slice into the shaft of the hair. It only makes sense that the bigger the teeth, the more likely it is to tear into the hair rather than slice. Read~~PULLING. Even at .25 micron, there ARE teeth that will aid the blade in gaining a foothold in the outer wall of the shaft. I also do not subscribe to the school of a razor being "too sharp". To me, that is an oxymoron. It isn't possible with the tools at our disposal and the steels we deal with. Even if you had a .0000025 micron paste and used it on a glass strop, the grain size of the steels in these razors would still leave tiny tiny teeth. Yeah they'd be small, but they'd be there. Based on that theory, I try to go as fine as possible, and the higher I go the less pull I've found in my shaves. A traditional str8 will never be as sharp as a feather blade purely base on edge geometry, but it is fun to try to get as close as I can.


OK guys, flame away! I can take it There are many honemeisters here before whose feet I would loyally lay my stones. These are just my views of what works for me, and I've been referred to as an anti-establishmentarian more than once in my life.

Jeff

Do any of you follow the pyramid blindly, or do you all use microscopes? I thought that a 10x magnifying glass would suffice, but I have heard that it will not.

Thanks for the feedback, there are some good thoughts to ponder here. So far I have been practicing with 2 ebay razors on my Norton. Without using the pyramid (because I didn't understand why), I have pretty good results. The ebay blades are great to practice with as I have had a few mishaps while learning how to develop the "feel" for honing. So, being open minded as I am, I will experiment with the pyramid and see it if makes a difference to me . I always strive for perfection so I imagine I will get it to work!

Emil

JL- I don't think any of us follow the pyramid blindly, most I think use whatever technique we use to judge blade sharpness and then determine when to stop using the pyramid and start focusing on other techniques.

Threeput-I agree on one level, but I think there are other options. I agree that 4K isn't the cutting edge but I have razors that are very sharp, and I consider these traditional. They cut simply because I have honed them to the thinest possible edge. I have other razors that are dull, really dull, and really smooth. And you know what, they cut whiskers just as effectively. Now I agree completely with what your saying on your razors, but you know what, its not the only path. You don't need teeth to cut, but you can cut using teeth. At least in my opinion. You can create a razor nearly as sharp as a DE. You can create a razor that cuts using teeth too. Again, only my opinion. But I think you should try it out, take one of your razors and just try and build teeth with it and don't hone it into oblivion like a DE, just let the teeth do the cutting and you'll see, eventually, that it is possible. Now, I don't know if you can have it both ways. I don't know if you can have ultra thin and have cutting teeth. In fact, I think most likely your right, most guys on here hone a razor into oblivion and they don't have any teeth on the blade. It cuts, just like a DE, by slicing into the whisker. But I've shaved with blades that simply weren't sharp by any definition and shouldn't cut. You can swipe the blade around your face at any angle and you hardly notice, yet it removes the whisker and feels smooth. I agree with you completly that MOST everyone here follows this protocol and most probably don't have any teeth on there razors, but I respectfully would like to disagree with any assertion that that is the only path to honing a razor to make it shave. It does explain everyones constant "ultra light" touch perspective on hone and strop, and why I use pressure on the hone and pressure on the strop though very clearly. I may agree someday that your approach, as with most others, that this ultra fine DE style slicing is the best way to shave. I don't know yet, but I do know that if I want a slicing blade I can get that pretty easy just by buying it. What I can't get is the ultra smooth cut that I achieve with a straight on any grit between 4K and 8K, never higher, and how that razor shaves sooooooo smooth. I have both styles of honing in my razor arsenal, mostly because I think experimentation is fun. But just because one person thinks a razor needs to be a Mach 3 wanna be, doesn't mean that decades of barbers were wrong. There could be other paths you just haven't seen yet.

And I agree with you, in your case, your right.

AF,

I must admit I'm a little bit at a loss of words as to how to respond to that. Firstly, thanks for the support. I honestly thought I was AGAINST the common ideal here on SRP. I thought everybody would rain hell down on me for what I thought in regards to honing, I never had an inclination to think I was in the majority with my views. As to shaving with teeth, I cannot truthfully say that I disagree with your views either. Only that I have never experienced it. The thought is intriguing though, and merits exploration. With my methods, I've never reached a smooth shave until way past that point on the stones, however, so the opportunity to see what you mean has never jumped up and presented itself. Different methods I suppose. Another factor could be that I have a very heavy beard, and if I ever cut corners, it is with my beard preparation. If a blade is not up to snuff for me, I don't really notice it until I get around to my chin area. That's the make or break section of my shave. If there's any tendency whatsoever for a blade to pull or catch on whiskers, it becomes painfully obvious when I reach my chin. Not literally painful, but I can shave all day with a sub-par edge and not get close there. Scything, straight down, across, whatever ~ makes no difference. Believe me when I say I hope I can learn your method and employ it as an option. I like the idea of your arsenal having both types of edges for different applications, or moods if you will. It sounds like less work, and I have several razors that simply won't take the kind of edge I'm trying to impart. TI's, no problem. Pumas and some Ducks, piece of cake. Beyond that, the blades that can handle it become fewer and farther between. The newer stuff (aside from a select few) seems to respond better. I can't WAIT until I get my hands on a custom with one of the hot-rod steels. Thanks for your feedback, and thanks for not tar-and-feathering me I must admit, I still have a feeling the lynch mob hasn't doused their torches just yet. I'll be watching this thread with great anticipation for the next few days heh

Jeff